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Academic conference devoted to the 90th anniversary of the birth of Igor Diakonoff (1915-1999) During 12-14 January 2005 the State Hermitage and the St Petersburg Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Oriental Studies hosted an academic conference devoted to the work of the outstanding Russian scholar Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff. The themes covered in the conference reflected the broad interests of I.M. Diakonoff. His basic field of scholarly work was Assyriology: the history, culture, and literary heritage of the countries of Mesopotamia, an area which in antiquity lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, on the territory of present-day Iraq. Tens of thousands of clay tablets with cuneiform texts come from this region. Many of them àre administrative documents dealing with economic matters. They give modern scholars a unique opportunity to study the economy of an ancient land and thereby to trace the economic laws by which society developed. This line of investigation became traditional in Russian scholarship thanks largely to I.M. Diakonoff and it constituted a major theme of the conference. A separate session consisted of reports on Semitic studies and comparative linguistics - fields in which Diakonoff did a great deal of work. Mythology and religion in the countries of Mesopotamia, issues of fine arts and literature, Scythian studies, study of writing systems used in ancient Mayan: all of these topics were appropriate for examination in a conference honoring the memory of I.M. Diakonoff, given his lively interest in the aforementioned questions. Many of those delivering reports, as well as those in the audience, consisted of staff from research and teaching institutions of St Petersburg and Moscow. There were also graduate students and undergraduates. They were nearly all students of I.M. Diakonoff or students of his students. The culmination of the conference was the screening of a documentary film about Igor Diakonoff made by A. Jankowski in the final years of the scholar's life. The conference was remarkable for the lively discussions which followed each report. There are plans to publish the conference materials and the discussions towards the end of 2005. The organizers of the conference hope this conference will be followed by regular periodic gatherings in the future at which Russian scholars specializing in Semitic studies and in Assyriology can meet to discuss the results of their research. |
 Igor Diakonoff (1915-1999) |
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